Maake Magazine

ARTIST-RUN

alpha nova & galerie futura
Am Flutgraben 3
12435, Berlin

Katharina Koch
Sylvia Sadzinski

www.galeriefutura.de/en/
Instagram @alpha_nova_galerie_futura

It’s rare to hear of a project space lasting nearly 40 years, but alpha nova & galerie futura prove to be an exception. Founded in 1986 as a space featuring women and feminist artists, they have since expanded their programming to reflect the morphing movements and various strands of feminism. Focusing on “feminisms, postcolonialism, intersectionality, conceptual and investigative approaches, collaborative work, art as knowledge production, research as artistic format, feminist curating, and feminist instituting” have birthed not only topical aesthetic interventions but also workshops, artist talks, discussions, and strategizing. We talk about the never-ending work of imagining and putting into practice feminist spaces, the precarity of funding a progressive art space, and the role of mentoring emerging artists.

Interview with Katharina Koch and Sylvia Sadzinski of alpha nova & galerie futura
By Miranda Holmes

Miranda Holmes (MH): What are both of your backgrounds, and what made you want to contribute to the project space? Did you start the space or did you inherit the project?

Katharina Koch (KK): Since 2012 I’ve been one of two artistic directors who are conducting alpha nova & galerie futura. It’s an art space for exhibitions and cultural events with an explicit feminist and emancipatory perspective at the intersection of art, political practices, activism as well as theory and academic approaches. Alpha nova & galerie futura was initiated in 1986 in former West Berlin by a group of activists from the Women For Peace movement. They wanted to create a space, especially for women artists and women cultural workers, to aid in their visibility in the art industry, which was even worse back then, and to give them space to represent themselves, do exhibitions and events and so on. In 2012, our former colleague Marie-Anne Kohl and I took over the space from an older generation of artistic directors.

Sylvia Sadzinski (SS): I joined the gallery in 2019 as a curator. Both of us are curators, not artists, and we both come from academia and the more theoretical side of art. This is also very much reflected in the programming. It always has a very discursive approach when it comes to the extra programming. We try to maintain strong connections with people in academia or people working with theory as well as activism.

MH: Do you have a feminist background along with your curatorial studies?

SS: Yes. I worked as a researcher at the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Linz before coming here for a year, and then I also did other curatorial work. Finding a position at alpha nova & galerie futura was a perfect fit, because I was always interested in having an intersectional feminist perspective in my studies and work.

MH: Do you think that the questions that were posed in 1986 about what made a feminist space change over time?

KK: The perspective on who is represented and who feminism serves has changed. Not just to focus on women artists, and try to offer a space only for women artists, but also we have a more plural concept on what this means. We still work mostly with women artists and FLINTA (female, lesbian, inter, non-binary, trans, and agender persons) artists, but it's much more than only giving space to women.

MH: This seems to come through in your programming. Has the kind of programming you offer stayed consistent since the beginning of the gallery or did that develop over time?

KK: Since the beginning the gallery has centered around bringing certain political topics into the space, like discussions about the gender gap in the art industry, but the kinds of workshops and programming we are doing now include a broader range of emancipatory topics. So it’s also about the content of the work [not just who we’re showing]. Topic-wise, the gallery’s programming also got strengthened and diversified over time. The material that people are dealing with has some kind of emancipatory understanding, and especially has an intersectional approach.

SS: The feminist discourse changes so much. We’re not just trying to invite academics into a feminist art space but also actively open the space for other positions. For example, we’ve had guest curators come from other communities that we're maybe not part of – we're totally aware that we have several biases in our works and in our perspective. On one hand we work as an institution, but on the other hand, everything is in flux. So yeah, the outside curators who join us, they can take the space and just do their programming.

MH: You mentioned [before the interview] that the structure of alpha nova & galerie futura aims to be non-hierarchical. Can you talk more about how you organize and what challenges you face on a daily basis?

KK: Mostly it’s the two of us running the space. We have other positions and collaborators who just join us for a certain project, but still, in these collaborations, we try to discuss everything and be aware of different needs, backgrounds, skills and knowledge and try to do the best out of it. 

The most maybe unequal situation is the payment. We are not full time workers, but we have positions here, and we receive permanent funding mostly from the Berlin City Council. Although it is still precarious, we pay our collaborators from our budget. However, this budget is never certain and always depends on how much we are able to acquire through third-party funding. This means that we cannot always offer collaboration partners a secure and good salary. However, we deal with this situation very transparently and openly and try to make it as fair as possible.

SS: [It’s a question we return to]. What does it mean to not only curate but also work together in a feminist way? What does it look like having a feminist institution? Of course it is hard to figure things out when there are imbalances. We are very transparent about how decisions are made, what our finances are, what the budget is, how we are spending it. This makes sure we’re not gatekeeping any ideas or resources. It pushes against this capitalist way, like, me against you, or us against somebody else. 

When it comes to care and time, we also are aware that there are other things in life, like boundaries, or like, it’s ok to say I don't have time then, or let's just take a break now. It’s this way of pushing against perfectionism and trying something different. 

MH: Can you talk more about how you fund your space?

SS: The permanent funding [from Berlin City Council] is low and also precarious. It pays for part or a bit more than part-time jobs and some of the infrastructure, but not everything. Every two years we have to reapply to the Berlin City Council for our main funding. So if the political situation stays stable in Berlin, then we're good. But as a feminist art space with backlashes and political right wing parties on the rise, it’s still precarious and extremely fragile. 

We also depend on third party funding. Depending on the project, sometimes we get extra funding so we can have more helping hands, people who help with install, for example. It’s a difficult moral situation that for one project, maybe we get third party funding and have a good budget and can pay the artists and the people working here very well and have good graphic design. And then for another exhibition, maybe our application for funding failed, and we only really have a very small budget. Sometimes you don't really feel well with it. 

KK: But as Sylvia said, we are transparent about it.. In order to be able to finance a project such as an exhibition, we work closely with the artists and partners to jointly acquire third-party funding.

If we fail we have to decide together whether it makes sense to realize it at all or to do it on a smaller scale and how. We think a lot about self exploitation and exploitation [of others].

MH: Can you describe what your overall organizational structure looks like? How is your day to day work flow?

KK: We have five to six exhibitions per year, more or less. Each is around six to eight weeks long, and we have opening hours from Wednesday till Saturday in the afternoon. During these days, one of us is here and sometimes both of us. From time to time we have an assistant who guides the exhibition hours. Moreover we have a lot of work meetings between the two of us or with artists and collaborators.

We also offer consultations to artists and cultural workers which we do over Zoom or here in the space. Since we’re funded by the social sector of the Berlin City Council, one reason they support us is is our consulting offer to FLINTA artists and cultural workers. They can show us their portfolio for example and we give feedback. They might ask where they can apply for projects and exhibitions, how to approach people, how to get a network and other structural questions.

SS: This also goes back to not gatekeeping and about being open to supporting artists with different questions. And as Katharina said, maybe an artist just moved to Berlin, or is applying for funding for a certain project, and they have no idea about the funding structures in the city.

MH: How do you choose the artists you work with?

KK: In a few different ways. Sometimes artists send their portfolio, or someone from our network recommends an artist and we come together and talk, see if something can work between us. Sometimes a curator approaches us with a certain idea or concept and we discuss this, and then we work together to develop programming, researching and inviting people who could be interested. Sometimes we offer the space to guest curators and they bring their own community. One of the most interesting formats is when the two of us, as a curatorial team and possibly with other curatorial partners, think of a topic or theme together, research it and develop an artistic-discursive program in a ping-pong process. We then invite various artists, activists and theorists to contribute to the show.

SS: It comes naturally. It's not like about ticking a list or something. It’s about having a balance in programming. Looking at the series for next year, maybe it’s a lot of white or cisgendered artists and topics, or maybe we should include more queer topics here... [so we counterbalance it].

MH: Is it usually the artists that will introduce a friend who wants to do a workshop with their show? Or do you seek out people who contribute to the side programming?

SS: It's both. When artists come to us with an exhibition, especially when it's a solo show, we encourage them to think about expanding a program.

Sometimes the exhibiting artist invites another artist to give a talk to discuss their practice. We encourage them to think about how they can expand their networks afterwards.

MH: Has there been any unusual kind of programming that an artist has brought in? Anything that’s stuck with you?

SS: As part of Cornelia Herfurtner’s exhibition, we offered an inclusive tour with Katrin Dinges. People could approach the artworks with their hands and fingers. And then with this same exhibition, Of air mattresses, straw and other weapons, we also had discussions with a lot of activists. Cornelia Herfurtner invited different generations of feminist activists to learn about practical strategies and approaches of resistance. A lot of people came here who normally never go to art spaces. As part of our ongoing series [Digital] Present Feminist Futures we had a talk with Marie Kochsiek, one of the founders and developers of an anti-capitalist menstrual timer app, like a period app. So something like this can be really different, maybe it has nothing to do with an art space in a very narrow sense. But for us, this belongs together.

We also had a workshop with Stefanie Wuschitz from Vienna who was teaching us how to build [politically] Leftist robots, for example. And we offered workshops about feminist leadership together with Jana Hornberger.

We have a space where a lot of different things can happen. It's something I enjoy, because if it was just about fine arts, this wouldn’t be enough for me on a political level. It’s so beneficial to look at certain topics from not only different perspectives, but also different fields of knowledge.

MH: Do you share resources with other project spaces in Berlin?

KK: There are so many project spaces and we have personal contacts with some. We work together from time to time with others. We go to their space regularly, or they come here, so it is a kind of project space network. Some of them also have existed for a very long time, and some not, there’s fluctuation in the project spaces.

SS: The atmosphere with other spaces is like we're in this together. In Berlin, there are so many art scenes, and you can find your people that have the same values that go beyond aesthetics. These are the kinds of people you stick to.

Find out more about alpha nova and galerie futura on their website and Instagram @alpha_nova_galerie_futura